"There are no such thing as silent movies or sound movies. There are just movies", says the Festival's director Jay Weissberg.
Eleven masterpieces will be on show to world audiences, some of which are of considerable historical significance such as Moonlight and Noses by Stan Laurel, part of which was found in the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and another part in the Library of Congress in Washington.
Stan Laurel in DETAINED (US 1924), directed by Percy Pembroke Source: Lobster Films / Fries Film Archief
"For almost 80 years this film was believed to have been lost, or at least it was only available in fragments. Thanks to this discovery, it will finally be possible to see the complete film for the first time in almost 90 years", explains Weissberg.
"This project was made possible by the close collaboration that exists between Canberra and Washington."
The Silent Film Festival is available online from October 3 through 10 and features movies from China, the United States, Germany, Greece, Holland, France, Denmark and other countries.
Mary Pickford in A ROMANCE OF THE REDWOODS (US 1917), Regia di Cecil B. DeMille. Source: Courtesy George Eastman Museum.
Italian-Australian pianist Mauro Colombis is one of the many international musicians invited to compose music for the silent movies shown at the Festival.
Colombis composed the music for the 1928 German Film Abwege (The Devious Path) in G.W. Pabst’s cynical take about a woman (Brigitte Helm) who embraces hedonism when her husband neglects her.
Jay Weissberg was born in New York but moved to Rome as "I fell in love with the city" he admits.
ABWEGE, (DE 1928). Regia di Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Source: Münchner Filmmuseum.
He is a film critic for Variety since 2003 and a co-curator of Views from the Ottoman Empire, an archival project whose goal is to locate films shot in Ottoman territories and screen them in the locations where they originated.
Jay Weissberg al Teatro Verdi di Pordenone. Source: Fotografia di Giulio Ladini.
